Adlai Stevenson II Quotes

130 Sourced Quotes

We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy – for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals – than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.

Adlai Stevenson II
True Patriotism, it seems to me, is based on tolerance and a large measure of humility.

Adlai Stevenson II
Someone must fill the gap between platitudes and bayonets.

Adlai Stevenson II
The relationship of the toastmaster to speaker should be the same as that of the fan to the fan dancer. It should call attention to the subject without making any particular effort to cover it.

Adlai Stevenson II
Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses … yet we are all children of the same Judaic-Christian civilization, with much the same religious background basically.

Adlai Stevenson II
The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations great or small — to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.

Adlai Stevenson II
Carelessness about our security is dangerous; carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.

Adlai Stevenson II
A free society means a society based on free competition and there is no more important competition than competition in ideas, competition in opinion. This form of competition is essential to the preservation of a free press.

Adlai Stevenson II
After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.

Adlai Stevenson II
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

Adlai Stevenson II
A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.

Adlai Stevenson II
What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. I am profoundly aware of the magnitude of the universe, that all is ruled by law, including my finite person. I believe in the infinite wisdom that envelops and embraces me and from which I take direction, purpose, strength.

Adlai Stevenson II
The Republican party makes even its young men seem old; the Democratic Party makes even its old men seem young.

Adlai Stevenson II
In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.

Adlai Stevenson II
I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great.

Adlai Stevenson II
On this shrunken globe men can no longer live as strangers. Men can war against each other as hostile neighbors, as we are determined not to do; or they can co-exist in frigid isolation, as we are doing. But our prayer is that men everywhere will learn, finally, to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge.

Adlai Stevenson II
We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

Adlai Stevenson II
The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.

Adlai Stevenson II
Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity — in short, of tyranny — and it is committed to making tyranny universal.

Adlai Stevenson II
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

Adlai Stevenson II
Nixon's farm policy is vague, but he is going a long way toward solving the corn surplus by his speeches.

Adlai Stevenson II
I have sometimes said that flattery is all right, Mr. President, if you don't inhale it.

Adlai Stevenson II
The last time I was in this hall was when my late beloved boss, Frank Knox, the secretary of the Navy, spoke here, and it was a better speech than the one I'll be giving here tonight. I should know, I wrote them both.

Adlai Stevenson II
It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.

Adlai Stevenson II
Because we believe in the free mind we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself.

Adlai Stevenson II
An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Adlai Stevenson II
She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

Adlai Stevenson II
The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.

Adlai Stevenson II
Many of the world's troubles are not due just to Russia or communism. They would be with us in any event because we live in an era of revolution—the revolution of rising expectations. In Asia, the masses now count for something. Tomorrow, they will count for more. And, for better or for worse, the future belongs to those who understand the hopes and fears of masses in ferment. The new nations want independence, including the inalienable able right to make their own mistakes. The people want respect—and something to eat every day. And they want something better for their children.

Adlai Stevenson II
The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become what it was intended to be — a world society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but law backed by justice and popular consent.

Adlai Stevenson II